Recreating Philadelphia's buttery cakey goodness

Post date: 2021-04-14 04:18:05

Several years ago, I bought a piece of butter cake from a vendor at the Reading Terminal Market, in Philadelphia. It was magical, how good it was. I want to recreate it, but I can't find a recipe that exactly matches my memory...

What I got was clearly closer to Philadelphia Butter Cake (like this), rather than St. Louis style gooey butter cake (like this). I don't believe there was any cream cheese in it.

The biggest thing is: every recipe I find has very obviously distinction in layers. There's the bready/cakey layer, and the gooey top layer. The butter cake I got in Philedelphia, however, wasn't like that. Yes, there were two separate layers, but they were much closer in consistency and appearance than you get from the recipes I've found. It wasn't like you could look at it and go, "Yes, here is a gooey layer on top of a cakey/bready layer." Instead, what I got in Philadelphia at first hit the senses as a single, solid mass, and then only through reflection and careful inspection revealed itself to have two separate layers within it. In other words, it was after a few bites that I realized, "Hey! The top part is kinda different from the bottom part!"

Any ideas what kind of variant on butter cake it was? Have a recipe? Or any suggestions about how I could alter the Philadelphia Butter Cake recipe I linked above, to get it closer to what I remember?

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